


The River

by Winterling42



Category: Campaign (Podcast), Campaign: Skyjacks
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode 26, Gen, Missing Scene, Spoilers, episode 87, the afterlife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: "The captain is....angry."Where Orimar found Dref.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	The River

Orimar tripped over him, in the mist. The dark forest had very little undergrowth, just the great columns of branchless trees and the rushing mist—the river. Between them, the tether was a glowing thread, frayed thin by the death of its creator. Thin enough that Orimar couldn’t see the huddled form of his ship’s doctor, sunk under the soft cloud. 

“Shit!” He flailed into a tree, regaining his balance as the mist swirled beneath his feet. The rounded shoulder of a coat appeared and vanished. Orimar growled and plunged his hand into the icy water-smoke, grabbed a fistful of fabric and _hauled_ . Up Dref came, limp and half translucent in the dark. Under his hand, the coat was rough canvas, then leather, then fine wool. Dref was muttering vaguely, his whole being _unfocused_ , unwound. 

Orimar slapped him. 

Instantly Dref condensed—but not into _Dref_ . In a moment long corn-silk hair clung to Orimar’s knuckles, the coat he was holding a short, stiff-necked thing reeking of starch and dyed Amyrillian purple. “How _dare—”_ a Youngblood snarled at Orimar’s chest like a puppy, until he met the captain’s eyes. Then the tether surged between them, the thing another man had made. Dref grew taller, put his feet down onto the spongy loam and hunched away from the intensity of the thing between them. 

He started to speak, stopped. Drew a breath he didn’t need. “Captain...” 

“Save your words, fool.” Orimar wanted to shake him again, wanted to punch him. It was not _right_ that this nervous wreck of a man had been the one _puppeting_ him for almost seven months. “Unless you want to draw Their eye.” Dref flinched again, shook his head. Clutched at his empty chest. Remembering, perhaps, the chill of a stone knife. 

“I’m dead,” he said at last, hollowly. Orimar grunted an agreement. He had no more to offer that particular stupidity. “I died but...I’m still here. Wherever _here_ is.” For the first time Dref took an interest in their surroundings, reaching out to run one hand along the bark of a tree, to kick at the mist obscuring his legs below the knee. 

“And it’s to that point I’m here at all.” Orimar muttered. He kept one eye on the gloom between the trees, and the other on Dref. For all his recent ill-advised heroics, Dref Wormwood was no fool. He looked back at Orimar sharply, some trace of his former curiosity ablaze. 

“And what point is that? Captain?” 

In the distance, a light blinked into existence. It was not looking at them—not yet. Orimar grabbed Dref’s elbow and pulled him away, deeper into the shadows. The newly dead man did not resist, but neither did he retreat into his former passivity. The longer Orimar stood here, the tighter he could feel the tether, spinning them together surely as his mother’s spindle. 

As much as he loathed it, the idea that _he_ was the one providing solidity to _Dref_ , after so long clinging to the edges of the River, had a grim sort of humor. “Your spell,” he said at last, once they were a safe distance away. Not that safety wasn’t relative, here. “It’s still going.” 

Dref was quiet for a moment. Orimar felt him creeping up the tether, testing it’s boundaries. “Yes...I made sure...before I died. My work—” he paused, glanced side-long at Orimar.

The smile Orimar gave him was not friendly. “Yes, _Dref_ ,” he growled. “As the work in question here, shall we see what _I_ think?” 

He was always surprised at what got Dref’s back up. “I did the best with what I— the options were _fairly limited_ , at the time,” Dref snapped back, arms crossed defensively. “Your orders—” 

“I’m _quite_ sure my instructions were not _animate my dead body for your personal gain—”_ Orimar only realized he was shouting when another light opened up, much closer. The mist drew up into a cowl, cloaking the light in a vaguely human shape. This time, it was Dref who took hold of him, one pale hand clutching at the back of his coat as the other dug again into his own chest. 

Despite himself, an old protectiveness surged, and Orimar put one arm out across Dref as if to shield him as they both backed away from the searching eye. They were silent for a long time, waiting for the light to lose interest and go out. Orimar felt the tug of the River around his boots, the mist sliding past him. It promised rest, calm, the release of fear and anger. It was, as always, tempting.

“Captain?” Dref’s voice was quiet, steady. The grasping hand in his coat flattened into a reassuring grip on his shoulder. 

“I want you. To stop. Touching me.” Orimar wrapped himself in the tattered edges of fury, drawing it up out of the mist. Dref pulled his hand away at once, and Orimar could turn to face him. “How close were you?” he asked bluntly. 

“To what?”

“Finishing the spell.” 

Dref blinked at him for a moment, opened and closed his mouth like a fish. “The spell—it’s done, as much as it can be. You being here—there, I mean—that was not the intended purpose.” 

“I’m _making_ it the purpose,” Orimar snapped. “How. Close.”

Dref opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. Adjusted his spectacles, needlessly. “I—I could not possibly say. True, we have not yet begun to even reach the boundaries of what is _possible_. Here, I...” he trailed off, fascinated by an eddy in the River. The mist sucked eagerly at his boots, and Orimar had to shake him again. The contact wound them tighter still, until Orimar could feel a faint flutter of pulse in his own chest.

“None of that now, boy,” he said, more gently than before. “Can you do it?”

“Bring you back?” Dref asked, only a little vague. Orimar only nodded. He did not dare let anything like hope stir—an unpredictable flare of heat would swing a skyship out of true as sure as any maelstrom. Dref swallowed, another nervous habit of the living. “Per—perhaps.” He blinked, grew heavier and more solid under Orimar’s hand on his shoulder. “It would require...time, I think. And research.” 

“Time you have.” Orimar glanced around the dark wood. “Can you hold yourself together for the research?” 

For the first time, Dref met his gaze. The first time Orimar had seen him, he’d thought the pale gray color weak and watery. Dref’s cringing, stammering manner had not reassured him. But there was something now in the dead man’s eyes, something more like steel. The tangled thing between them grew tighter, then went loose as Dref began to stitch. Orimar, only vaguely aware of the tether, of what it meant, felt his skin shiver. With this thread, Dref could (and had) commanded him like a toy. With this thread, he could unmake them both. 

But Orimar was not the shadow of a ghost he had been, and Dref was newly dead. The stitching was loose, ill-fitting. But solid enough, for the moment. “I’m going back,” Orimar said at last. As easily as he might have suggested going belowdecks for dinner. “I’ve got my own work to be tending to.” He did not add that it was work Dref had made. That it was his own body he must work at, when once he had moved and lived and breathed as easy as sailing. 

Dref only nodded, flexing his hands slowly. Orimar could see them, burned red in long stripes by the magic of the divine. So the stitching had not been any easier for him. 

“We still need each other, Wormwood.” Orimar growled. “Finish that spell, and I’ll see to it you get wherever it is you want to go.” After the other Youngblood’s narrow escape, Orimar could not imagine that Dref felt his work finished any more than Orimar did.

After all, they could not live their lives dictated by cowards and backstabbers like Calavar or Tiberius. 

But Dref just nodded again, patting around in his coat as if for paper and charcoal. “I remember...no, not quite remembering. But I _knew_ something, before. It was important.” He wasn’t really talking to Orimar, and the captain’s ghost let himself be drawn back towards the heart. The physical world closed around him like a vise, bright and heavy and so very, very beautiful. 


End file.
